A New Beginning

Greg Laurie: The best defense is a good offense.

Dave: Pastor Greg Laurie says the successful Christian life is one where we stay diligent and grounded in the word of God. If we don't, we'll suffer the consequences.

Greg Laurie: We said we would maintain our Christian life. We said we would stay strong in our faith, but we've neglected it. And before you know it, you're on the side of the road. The Christian life is like a grease pole. You're either climbing or slipping.

Dave: The successful Christian life doesn't happen by accident. It takes focus and effort. Salvation is a free gift, but Christian growth involves some work and sacrifice on our part. And today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie continues his series in John called The Seven Signs of Jesus. We'll learn how to map out a plan to keep us moving full speed in the right direction. If you've had a few stumbles and sputters in your walk with the Lord, this is a great opportunity to knuckle down and buckle up.

Greg Laurie: All right, let's take a quick poll. How many of you are super neat, organized people? Raise your hands. Super neat and organized. Okay. How many of you are messy people? Raise up your hand. Wow. It's almost evenly split. How many of you who are messy and are neat? How many messy people are married to a neat person and vice versa? We See, that's funny, isn't it? And that's how it is in my home as well. My wife Kathy, total slob. Why are you laughing? Because it's not true. She's the opposite. She's very neat, very organized, always cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

And I am not that person. In fact, I think we all know what it's like if you're one of those messy people. They have messes get so big that you just I can't live in this space anymore, right? So finally I have to do something about it. Same is true of a car. You know when you get a car, there's nothing like the new car smell. I love this. And you make a vow. I don't know who you make it to, you just make it. I will wash this car every week. No. I'll wash it twice a week.

No. I'm going to wash it every single day. There won't be a single dent in this car, and no one will ever eat anything in this car, ever. Well, a little time passes, you get a dent here, you get a stain there, and instead of the new car smell, instead you have the in and out burger Chick-fil-A smell. And that burrito you lost a few months ago has reappeared. It climbed up into your child's car seat and buckled itself in. So it's getting scary. So basically, you know, you let things go and you have the problems that develop.

In the Jesus Revolution movie, it shows me driving around in a Corvair. And I did have a Corvair. Not a Corvette, a Corvair where the engine is in the back. And that car was breaking down a lot, and I I couldn't afford a new set of tires, so I had retreads. Do you know what retreads are? I said this to someone the other day. They said, what's a retread? A retread is it's just it's a layer of rubber they put around a ball tire. And I take offense to the phrase ball tire. I don't like it.

And so you put this rubber, you glue it on, and I'd be driving down the 91 and the retread comes off. I have to pull over, stalled by the side of the road, changing my tire. Sometimes our lives can be that way. We said we would maintain our Christian life. We said we would stay strong in our faith, but we have neglected it. And before you know it, you're on the side of the road. It's been said the Christian life is like a grease pole. You're either climbing or slipping. It comes down to this. The best defense is a good offense, right?

So instead of merely reacting, you should be acting aggressively in pursuit of your spiritual life and always cleaning. Don't let messes build up. You have two choices in life. You can undertake the Greg way of cleaning or the Kathy way of cleaning. The Greg philosophy on cleaning is never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. And if you don't know what to do with something, throw it in a random drawer. So I have drawers filled with stuff, just all kinds of stuff, bins and this and that and and I don't even know what's in it anymore, and I don't even want to open it.

It frightens me a little bit. The Kathy way of cleaning is always clean, always. Stay on top of it. There's dust on the floor. Greg sweeps it under a rug. Kathy sweeps it properly. And I think the same is true of the Christian life, always maintaining your relationship with God because you can wait until major problems develop as a result of neglect. It might be a fascination that turns into a habit that then becomes an addiction. And soon a little thing becomes a big thing. Suddenly that little problem is like a Goliath in your life.

You know what I mean by Goliath? He was that giant of a man in the story of David. 9 ft 6 in solid muscle taunting David and the rest of the people of Israel. And And we can have giants in our life like that that frighten us, that taunt us, that scare us. But you know, Goliath wasn't always a giant. He was a little baby once. I bet he was a big baby, right? I I bet no one wanted to change his diaper. Would you want to? Time to change Goliath's diaper. I did that yesterday and it took hours.

I don't want to do it again. I was traumatized by it. And imagine him having a temper tantrum as a little toddler, but one day he grows into a giant of a man. And our giants, our problems, so to speak, start small, but little things turn into big things. Little liberties turn into big vices. And then one day they're a full grown giant. So what we need to do is ask God to cleanse us of our sin on a regular basis. Don't wait till it builds up to some giant problem or horrible mess. Every day it's maintenance in the Christian life.

Jesus taught us in the Lord's Prayer to pray as follows. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. Just as surely as you should pray on a daily basis for God's provision as in your daily bread, you should also pray on a daily basis for the forgiveness of God in your life. All right, well, let's read now this story which was actually the second sign of Jesus as recorded in John chapter two, the cleansing of the temple.

I'm reading from the New Living Translation starting in verse 13. It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went to Jerusalem. In the temple area, he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices. He also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money. So Jesus made a whip. I love that. Underline that. Jesus made a whip. I almost gave that as the title of this message. Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the temple. He drove out the sheep and the cattle, scattered the money changers coins over the floor, and he turned over the tables.

Then going over to the people who sold doves, he told them, get these things out of here. Stop turning my father's house into a marketplace. Okay, we'll stop there. So this is sign number two. Seven signs in the Gospel of John. Sign number one, turning the water into wine. Sign number two, overturning the tables. If you were one of the disciples, you might have said, Lord, are you sure you want to make this your second sign? Because the first one was really popular. I mean, Jesus shows up at a wedding. He turns water into wine.

Everybody's happy. Maybe, Lord, your second sign could be healing a blind man or the recovery of of the ability to hear or or have a raising someone from the dead. Jesus says, no, I'm kind of thinking of going with this right up front. And it was a radical thing. You know, to overturn tables, that that's kind of a big deal. We've seen it in a million westerns, haven't we? The cowboys, the gamblers sitting around the smoke-filled bar playing cards. Everybody lays their hand on the table, and one guy says to the other guy, I think you're cheating.

And all of a sudden he turns the table over and the cards go flying and the money goes flying and the piano player. The piano player always has a little derby hat on. It's mandatory. If you're a piano player, you wear the little derby hat, not a cowboy hat. And he always has a little garter thing on his sleeve and he's playing All of a sudden he stops. Everyone stops and looks and a fight breaks out. It's a violent act to overturn a table. Money went flying. He did it to get their attention. Kind of reminds me of our own lives.

You know, we invite Jesus to our table. We invite him into our life. He brings, as the Bible calls it, joy unspeakable and full of glory. He brings us a peace that passes human understanding. It's fantastic. Suddenly for the first time perhaps we have hope, we have purpose. We say it's great to invite Jesus to your table until he turns it over because he might come and say, well, there's some things in your life that need to change. That this you can't do this anymore. This is destroying you. It's destroying other people. Why does he do this?

He tears something down in order to build it back right. Jesus compared it to someone pruning, pruning a fruit tree. In John 15:2 he says, he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.

Dave: Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment.

Greg Laurie: Did you know that we put our services that we do on Sundays online? It's called Harvest at Home. And you can be a part of our extended congregation no matter where you are. And people watch from literally all around the world. So if you want to watch Harvest at Home or view it later if you like, just download the Harvest Plus app and then join us for Harvest at Home.

Dave: Well, you've joined us for Pastor Greg's study called Time to Clean House based in the Gospel of John chapter two.

Greg Laurie: So Jesus and his disciples are headed into Jerusalem. It's Passover time. That was when friends and family would gather, kind of a happy time, maybe a sense of joy in the air. And uh and all of a sudden Jesus is getting irritated. He's hot and bothered. He walks into the temple and what does he see? He sees this outer area known as the court of the Gentiles filled with all of these tables with these money changers. Now what is this all about? These are people that stepped in and said to you, you come in with your little lamb.

It's all you could afford. It 's unblemished. It meets the criteria. The money changer says, I'm sorry, but this lamb does not pass muster. But we're having a deal on temple approved lambs that you can buy for a jacked up price. And so you would pay it because you wanted to approach God. And in fact, even in the old covenant before Christ came and died on the cross for our sins, establishing the new covenant, God welcomed non-Jews to believe. You could still believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So the court of the Gentiles was for those folks.

But as they're trying to get in to approach God, they have this barrier put in front of them. And this made Jesus angry. Bible commentator Warren Wiersbe made this statement in a quote. You can tell a lot about a person by how they answer these three questions. What makes you laugh? What makes you weep? And what makes you angry? Good question. What makes you laugh? What makes you cry? And what makes you angry? Jesus was clearly angry. This is righteous indignation. Verse 15, Jesus made a whip. Wait a second. Is this Indiana Jones or Jesus of Nazareth?

A whip? Seriously? Overturning tables? Is this necessary? Apparently so. It flies against the stereotypical false image of Jesus that we so often see in religious art where Jesus is scrawny, anemic, sometimes even feminine in appearance. And we think this dude needs a sandwich, okay? You You're making fun of Jesus? No. I'm making fun of a false religious portrayal of Jesus that is not biblical. The Jesus of the Bible, I think he was strong. I think he was a man's man. If you would have met him as a guy, you'd say, I admire that man. It takes strength to overturn a table.

It takes strength to carry a cross that the streets of Jerusalem after your back has been ripped open with a Roman whip. Jesus was strong, but he was meek. And there's a difference between being meek and weak. You know, sometimes someone is very weak and they say, well, I'm just meek. No, you're actually weak. You're not meek. You're weak. The word meek means power under constraint. It's someone who has the ability to do something but chooses not to. So Christ is meek, but in this particular instance he's showing righteous indignation. Bringing me to point number one if you're taking notes.

There are things that make God angry. There are things that make God angry. This perverting of his purpose was something that clearly made Jesus angry. Listen, I don't know about you, but I want to know what angers God. I want to know what God loves as well as what he hates. In the book of Proverbs, the Lord says, there are seven things I hate. It's good to know what those things are because you don't want to do something that God hates and you don't want to make him angry. By the way, it takes time to make a whip.

You know, it took I don't know, a couple of hours. Uh so this is not a explosion of anger. This is not God losing his temper. Can you imagine if God just went on a temper tantrum, planets flying around? I'm mad. I want breakfast. You know, whatever makes someone angry. God's not like that. When he's angry, it's for a reason. It's righteous indignation. You almost wonder if the disciples were a bit embarrassed. Like really, Lord, seriously? You're doing this? Yes. I'm doing this. But then they remembered Psalm 69 verse 17 of John two. His disciples remembered it was written, zeal for your house will consume me.

That brings me to point number two. God cares about his house. God cares about his house. He likes to maintain it and he likes to keep it clean and he will not tolerate evil. And so if you come to Jesus, he will accept you as you are, but he does not want to leave you that way. Yes, Jesus was a friend of sinners. Yes, he welcomed tax collectors and thieves and prostitutes and other people like that. But he didn't leave them that way. Matthew was a tax collector. That meant that he worked for Rome. He would have been hated by his fellow Jews because he being a Jewish man was perceived as a turncoat, a Benedict Arnold if you will.

And yet Matthew hears Jesus say, follow me, and he gets up and leaves his table and follows Christ. And I think of all the disciples, he gave up the most materially because he had a very lucrative career. But he was a tax collector. Then he became Matthew the apostle and also Matthew the author of a gospel. Saul of Tarsus was a murderer on his way to hunt down Christians, torture them, and put them to death. And he met Jesus on the road to Damascus and he was transformed from being Saul of Tarsus to being the apostle Paul and wrote so many of the great epistles.

And it just goes on and on. Yes, we serve a God of mercy, but he's also a God of majesty. And he doesn't want sin in his church, and he doesn't want sin in our lives. And so he hates anything that opposes us. He loves us, and because he loves us, he hates anything that would hurt us. So we should love what God loves and we should also hate what God hates. I read this horrible CDC report that just came out about how sad so many young people are, especially young women. The report said, quote, teen girls are suffering from unprecedented sadness and confusion.

A new report from the CDC says, 57% of teen girls felt persistently sad or hopeless, and roughly 30% of them were suicidal. That makes me sad. And you know what? It makes me mad. I'm not mad at the kids, but I'm I'm mad at a culture that encourages behavior that will hurt these young people. I'm mad at a culture that has an agenda going down to that. Cartoons our kids watch that push values that are antithetical to what we believe as followers of Jesus Christ. I'm I'm not mad at sinners, but I'm mad at the sin.

And I think sometimes we get angry and strike out. I hate sinners. I Oh, hold on now, buckaroo. Hold on. Love the sinner, hate the sin. The Bible says you should love your enemies. And here's also what the Bible says. And it's a good reminder. Second Timothy two 25, gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change these people's hearts and they'll learn the truth and they'll come to their senses and escape from the devil's trap, for they've been held captive by him to do whatever he wants. The enemy is the devil. The people who are serving the devil or living in sin, they're the captives.

They're the people in the prisons. News flash, you used to be one of them. I used to be one of them. We lived in rebellion against God. So we need to love people and do something. And this makes me mad enough to strike back. Yeah, how do we strike back? By preaching the gospel. There's no more powerful tool that we have, preaching the gospel. Don't curse the darkness, turn on the light. And we should always be looking for ways to build a bridge, understanding that non-believer is held captive by their sin. The enemy is the devil and we want to help them come to know Christ.

Dave: Such good counsel today here on A New Beginning. Pastor Greg Laurie's message titled Time to Clean House. And there's more to come in this study. Uh Pastor Greg just pointed out our mission here at Harvest Ministries and A New Beginning. It's to bring people into a relationship with the Lord. That's our top priority. And Pastor Greg, someone listening could make that kind of change in their life right now, Kathy.

Greg Laurie: That's right. The Bible says, whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. So think of it this way. Maybe you're out in a riptide in the ocean and you can't get your footing and you're in trouble and you see a lifeguard call out for help and the lifeguard will rescue you. The same is true spiritually. You're drowning in your sin. You need help. Jesus will save you. He will rescue you, but you must call out to him. And you know how you do that? You do it in prayer. So let me just lead you in a simple prayer and you can pray this prayer after me.

You could pray it out loud if you like. And this is where you are calling out to Jesus to save you. Just pray this. Lord Jesus, I know I'm a sinner and I know you are the savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. Now, Lord, I turn from my sin and I put my faith in you. Be my savior, my Lord, be my God and my friend. I choose to follow you from this moment forward. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Hey, if you just prayed that prayer, I want you to know that Christ himself has come to live inside of you.

And I have a resource I want to send you. It's called The New Believer's Bible. So The New Believer's Bible is The New Testament in The New Living Translation with hundreds of notes that I wrote that will encourage you in this commitment you are making to follow Christ. There's some other materials included as well in what we call The New Believer's Growth Pack. But let me get this New Believer's Bible into your hands as quickly as possible. Here's Dave to tell you more.

Dave: Yeah, we'll be glad to send it all your way free of any charge if you prayed along with Pastor Greg today. Just ask for The New Believer's Bible when you call 1-800-821-3300. You can reach us anytime 24/7 at 1-800-821-3300 or go online to harvest.org and click Know God. Also follow Pastor Greg on Facebook. Just go to facebook.com/harvest.greglaurie. And then let us say a word of thanks to those who support us financially, those who make it possible for us to bring you these studies each day. We're definitely a listener-supported ministry. It's the generosity of listeners that help us be here with these programs.

So if you've partnered with us, thank you. And if you have yet to partner with us, well, I hope you'll get in touch today and let us know that you're standing with us. Even a small investment would help. It's actually an investment in changing lives. Thank you for partnering with us. You can donate securely online at harvest.org or write A New Beginning box 4000 Riverside, California 92514 or call us at 1-800-821-3300. Again, that's 1-800-821-3300. Next time, more insights from John chapter two and Pastor Greg's message Time to Clean House. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher Greg Laurie.